Review: La Soirée (Aldwych Theatre)

Nearly 15 years after its Edinburgh Fringe beginnings as La Clique, La Soirée has landed in the West End. Variety might have gone mainstream with a little help from Simon Cowell, but Brett Haylock’s circus cabaret has always been alt. The question is this: Has La Soirée come to the West End or has the West End come to La Soirée?

The answer is a bit of both. La Soirée still lives up to its name. Seven years after its first Olivier Award-winning outing, it remains the very definition of a good night out. A variety show on shuffle, combining big belly laughs with heady astonishment, it swings from raucous cabaret acts to dizzying circus. This year, we get American all-rounder Amy G popping a kazoo up her wazoo to parp a patriotic tune in President Trump’s honour, and the German gymnast Lea Hinz spinning on an aerial hoop like a human catherine wheel. Exuberant, boisterous and racy as ever, La Soirée‘s a party in public, perfect for the festive season.

Whether it lives up to its best, however, is another matter. There’s an old philosophical problem, dating back to the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, called The Ship of Theseus. It imagines a ship that has each of its component parts replaced one by one over time. Is it still the same ship? The same goes for La Soirée. With an all-new line-up, is it still the same show?

Over the years, Haylock has found like-for-like replacements for La Soirée‘s originals. In place of pinstriped strong men The English Gents we get the suited-and-booted Chilly Brothers, chucking each other around on the human trapeze. Trapeze acts swing by and one silly turn deserves another. As a result, La Soirée retains its own distinct flavour; the same head-spinning cocktail of sauce, silliness and spectacle. It looks and feels the same, and it works the same treat – the thrill of the risqué upping that of the risky. Same old La Soirée. Still got it.

Except, it also isn’t and hasn’t. Each substitute is that bit more bog-standard; still extraordinary in its own right, just ordinarily so. Rather than the witty reinventions of cabaret turns, today’s La Soirée is largely circus staples done well. Instead of David O’Mer’s bath-based straps act – a cologne ad come to life – we get LJ Marles hanging around all insouciant and sensual hand-to-hand from Leon Fagbemi and Klodi Dabkiewicz. Miss Behave’s anarchic clowning is dialled down into Amy G’s mischief. Individually, each act does the trick. Together, they fall short.

The exception is La Serviette, borrowed from Quebecois duo Les Beaux Frères, which puts two naked men between two crisp white towels that fold, unfold and refold always threatening to reveal too much. Classical and coy in equal measure, it subverts striptease every bit as well as Ursula Martinez’s legendary Hanky Panky. Originals Cabaret Décadanse and their club-singing puppets are as upbeat as ever, and the trashy slapstick of Daredevil Chicken (Anne Goldmann and Jonathan Taylor) is an upgrade in the silliness stakes, whether bouncing bananas mouth-to-mouth or coming unstuck at the seams mid quick-change routine.

Haylock’s added diversity too with a Mallakhamb duo from Mumbai, a masculine alternative to contemporary pole dancing, and the follicle-defying hair-hanging of Fancy Chance. Without wit or self-awareness, there’s a risk of exoticism; imported spectacles rather than knowing subversions. An unlikely charge for such a ludicrous evening, but La Soirée‘s in danger of taking itself too seriously.

La Soirée runs at the Aldwych Theatre until 3 February 2018